Currently, standalone furnaces are used to pretreat a substrate (e.g., a semiconductor wafer) to drive off moisture and residues on the substrate. However, a separate furnace is costly and occupies a large amount of valuable space in a fab. Alternatively, degas and preclean chambers have been used to achieve similar results. However, such an alternative solution does not yield an optimal system throughput since the degas operation takes a relatively long time due to the extensive time required for moisture and residue removal. Also, in the degas chamber, the substrate is heated to about 300° C. and the chamber is pumped down to a low pressure. Although the process releases unwanted material from the substrate surface, the material will then be deposited onto the wall of the chamber. The preclean process removes and/or reduces oxidation from the substrate using hydrogen, which cleaves off the oxygen. However, the substrate should be immediately processed after the preclean process because if the substrate leaves a low-oxygen environment, oxidation will reoccur.
Therefore, the inventor has provided an improved substrate treatment apparatus for use with integrated fabrication systems.